This classic 1971 photograph of the crescent Earth was taken by astronaut Alan Shepard, while he was aboard Apollo 14, exactly a decade after he became the first American in space. From Shepard’s 1998 New York Times obituary: “On the morning of May 5, 1961, Mr. Shepard became an immediate American hero. A lean, crew-cut former Navy test pilot, then 37, he began the day lying on his back in a cramped Mercury capsule atop a seven-story Redstone rocket filled with explosive fuel. After four tense hours of weather and mechanical delays, he was shot into the sky on a 15-minute flight that grazed the fringes of space, at an altitude of 115 miles, and ended in a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean 302 miles downrange from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Though not much by today’s standards, the brief suborbital flight had stopped a whole country in its tracks, waiting anxiously at radios and television sets. When the message of success came through — with a phrase that would enter the idiom, ‘Everything is A-O.K.!’– everyone seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief.

Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union may have been first into space, 23 days before, and have flown a full orbit, but with Mr. Shepard’s flight the United States finally had reason to cheer. In fact, Mr. Shepard’s success is credited with giving President John F. Kennedy the confidence to commit the nation to the goal of landing men on the Moon within the decade.”